Character of African Empires: Songhay

1. Character of African Empires: Songhay Knowledge of major empires and other political units and social systems 1450-1750

2. West African in general • Wealth and elaborately organized kingdoms emerged in West Africa. Referred to as successor states because each built on the ruins and contributions of it predecessor. • Located on savannas, these states original wealth came from trade of salt and gold

3. Songhai or Songhay • 1493 A High ranking Muslim slave, Muhammad Toure, staged a brilliant palace coup. • Used Islamic practices and Islam as an invaluable instrument for political and cultural control. • Extended Songhay’s frontiers across the middle Niger to include Mali, and eastward to the Hausalands. • Empire small by comparison to European or Asian empires. • Similar in being multi ethnic.

4. Political structure • Absolute monarchy • Military—35,000 cavalry and navy • Dependency on horses • Centralized government, but provincial administration • Muslim judges run legal system • Bureaucracy –ministries of army, navy, forests, fisheries, taxation • Unified weights and measures, currency • Vassal states pay tribute

5. Economics • Commercial towns—craft specialists and foreign merchant community • Farming—Muhammad established plantations, but majority were pastoralists or small farmers—grew rice, wheat, fruits and vegetables • Little technology—used hoe, but no heavy plows • Traders in gold, slaves, grains, salt, cloth • Slavery across Sahara

6. Social system • Strictly regulated according to class. • Rulers controlled much of the wealth • Elite held slaves, treated as persons not property, work in domestic service not in fields • Farmers, herders, fishers • Polygamy, multiple wives and unmarried sons • Women and men mix freely, some matrilineal • In cities foreign merchants, artisans and scholars

7. Culture • Islamic state, but Islam a thin veneer—95% of population of rural peasants and petty chiefs continued traditional animistic beliefs. • Timbuktu transformed into a center of Islamic scholarship—schools of theology, law, mathematics and medicine • Islamic scholars in government and religion • Multiethnic society mountains of N. Africa to forests of Cameroon • Books symbol of civilization in Islamic world • Hajs brought back arts science, education, goods language and promoted assimilation with indigenous populations

8. Limits of empire building • Overextention—could not keep the outlying regions insubjection. • Songhay archers and calvary chould not compete against the Moroccan cannons and guns • Ethnically diverse communities never developed a sense of nationality or nation-statehood—as long are the various local rulers continued to recognize central authority by sending taxes and tribute to the capital they were left alone • Empire collapsed in 1591